Ten Minus One
by Rachel2008
Summary: Remember the ten songs prompt everybody did like a season and half ago? Well, I did nine. Now. Blame the muse. Cristina/Owen, Callie/Arizona, Alex/Izzie, Addison, Derek, George, Lexie and Mark.


Tittle: Ten Minus One  
Author: Raachel2008  
Disclaimers: They aren't mine, no copryright infringement in intended, blah blah blah.  
Spoilers: None.  
Summary: Remember the ten songs prompt everybody did like half a season ago? Well, I did nine. Now. Blame the muse. Cristina/Owen, Callie/Arizona, Alex/Izzie, Addison, Derek, George, Lexie and Mark.  
Rating: T, just to be safe.  
Feedback: Like it, don't like it, just let me know.  
Archive: No.  
Author's note: The lovely Princessxleah, whose fics are posted here, was a very and generous beta and she is a great writer, too. Go read her work.

**Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes (Addison) **

She learns about the post-it and it saddens her, and baffles her, and infuriates her. She shouldn't give a damn, but she feels insulted – _insulted_ – at the notion that their love is so special that they don't need to go everybody else's route. Because if it is just a silly piece of paper, then what did it say about her own marriage?

There is another feeling creeping inside of her, one that has been haunting her nights – and some of her days, too – that she is the one who caused it all, who made all the bad decisions that led to a sordid affair, a failed union, a cross country move that landed her in a rainy, depressing city and then in an overwhelmingly sunny, equally depressing place where even the trees seem fake. _She_ feels fake, and if there is any adherence in that piece of stationary, maybe she was the one who conjured it all up in the first place.

Yet, she keeps going, even though every wrong step – and there are so many and so often these days - rattles pains anew, all along wearing that mask of Addison Adrienne Forbes Montgomery, high-class education and polished refinement that comes with a 25 million old money trust fund, except this time she cannot strut on these sky high heels without bordering on falling and failing.

Her thoughts are her most constant companion, and it is a scary moment, when she is alone with these ideas about post-its in her head, echoing the sad beats of an empty, lonely heart.

**Wish you Were Here- Pink Floyd (Alex, Alex/Izzie)**

He can spit out epithets that would make a street hooker blush, he can distill so much venom into a single word or a look that it makes his own body tremble with rage, he can consciously hurt people without the slightest trace of guilt, because the other option is to feel the pain himself and he would rather see the whole world combust than to go back to that place where he believes he will get the girl and the happy ending.

At night he does crunches and push-ups and there is a boxing bag hanging from the ceiling of that stupid trailer, and he punches and kicks until his hands start to cramp and he stops, because she has taken more than enough from him and he won't let her suck the life out of his career, too, and he hates that even that decision is about her.

But when he falls into bed and sleeps after hours of staring at nothing, his dreams are of safe and normal times, when there were freshly baked cupcakes, recently cleaned floors, and the smell of pine on a cold Christmas morning and blond hair spread on a white pillow next to him.

**Hips Don't Lie – Shakira – (Callie, Callie/Arizona)**

It's a choice, and it comes with a price, one that her generous trust fund can't pay, for you can't pray away the gay and you can't pray away the anti-gay either and some days the stares and the not-so-thinly veiled disgust – _disgust_ – get the best of her. In these moments she wonders if her next love will be a man again and even though she feels embarrassed and ashamed of herself, she secretly wishes that it would be so.

It is all new to her and sometimes it scares the shit out of her, worrying how it is going to be when the time for family gatherings comes, when that desire of having a baby hits her again, when another elderly patient asks why she is still single, since such a pretty doctor like her should have dozen of suitors after her, and offers to set up a date with his grandson lawyer.

But then she enters an on-call room and there's a set of warm lips crushing her own and expert fingers feeling her up, and her hips move forward and there is only truth in that and she knows exactly where she wants to be.

**Sailing - Rod Stewart (Lexie) **

She digs the soft grass with renewed energy, her glove covered hands feeling the soil until she is sure there is enough space for all of the bulbs. She carefully places them down one by one, meticulously lined up on the brown bed in the middle of endless bright green. It is a clear image, the one of the flowers that will spurt in a couple of months, red and yellow and very much alive.

When she is dine, she picks up her tools and shares a glance with the old lady doing the same a few graves away, understanding passing between them. She wonders if she will still be doing in fifity years, but she already knows the answer and prefers to not think about who will leave next, instead fixing her gaze on the name carved on the stone.

"I love you mom. I miss you." The tears that fall down her cheeks meet lips curved in a bittersweet smile and they taste like salt and memories and tulips petals errouneoulsy eaten by a four-year old girl and it is a pain that never goes away.

**Fortunate Son – Creedence Clearwater Revival (George) **

She is pretty and young, and she is minding her own business, but he is leaving to go to war and in a couple of days it will all be a distant memory, from another different life, and time is running against him anyway. It is with the half-smirk of a girl who is used to the attention that she ignores him without shutting him off completely, but maybe if he persists a bit more she will give him a smile, and maybe it will help in lifting the weight off of his shoulders.

He is sure of his decision, but the enormity of it all carries its own significance and he can only hope he will be able to honor the duty his country had bestowed upon him. She talks about finding the right guy and he thinks about when he had been that one for someone, whose trust he had betrayed in the most undignified way, trying to be that guy for another woman whose love has never been his – or anyone's, for the record.

She chats about being able to seize that second where everything changes and one faces a life altering decision, and would she take her chance? He doesn't think he has an answer for her, but then she steps forwards and his moment comes, and it is his turn to make a choice and he doesn't hesitate.

Even though she had never smiled at him.

**In my Life - Beatles (Cristina, Cristina/Owen) **

She eyes the contents of the metal safe on her lap in a mix of curiosity, awe, and shock, for she had never expected to be privy to that part of his life – perhaps there is an unsaid truth there that she had hoped to never be granted access to that, afraid to have a peek at what had broken him, because she doesn't want to hurt anymore – not for him, not for herself - and she is only looking for his passport anyway, so they can fly south, to the sea that they both love and to the sand that he hates.

There are medals and ribbons and papers and pictures of smiling dead men and women – even though she knows some of them are still alive, and yet she wonders if they are ghosts, too – still, she can't bear to look at their faces without feeling like she is violating whatever was left of their souls after war had had its way with them.

Then her attention is drawn to the two small plaques in a corner and she can't breathe and her eyes well up at the sight of old bloodstains covering most of his name in both pieces, stories of wounds and horrors that she wouldn't dare to imagine.

It is the ever-present past right in front of her in the form of his dog tags and the tips of her fingers trace the outside of the metal, cold and harsh, and she is terrified just thinking at how many times the two plates could have been separated and it is a miracle that the chain is not shattered. A drop of moisture falls over a brownish spot and for a second she thinks it may dissolve whatever suffering had been engraved there, but tears and love cannot wash away carnage, and she stays there for a long time, holding the tags close to her heart, because it is _him_, and her life depends on it.

**You're So Vain – Carly Simon (Mark)**

She's a sex kitten and her perfect breasts are his work and so it's only natural that he uses his most seductive smile on her and that she reciprocates what he has to offer. It's not like he's looking for something, at least not purposely, because he doesn't plan things like that, they just happen. It's in his nature, the smooth player who enjoys the game itself as much as the end results.

An innocent medical related question comes out of her mouth, out of those delicious kissable lips carefully enunciating every syllable, and he knows he would have to wait only until his shift is over before she is screaming from pleasure under him – or over him, he doesn't really care. Who is he kidding? He doesn't have to wait for the end of his shift. He can have her, oh, so effortlessly – weren't they always easy, except for that one who broke his heart so long ago? Make them feel like you are the prize; make them feel like _they_ are the prize. Either way, it works.

He's tired of himself, though. He wants to be the man he suspects nobody really thinks he can become. He's aware that maybe he can't – or maybe deep down he doesn't want to. It's an unsettling and yet comforting feeling, that consciousness of himself; that makes him okay to be in his own skin. Slowly, as her carefully manicured hand lies softly on his arm, her voice drops a tone or two, and his voice does too, and he's not ashamed. He has never been.

**Run Through the Jungle – Creedence Clearwater Revival (Owen, Cristina/Owen)**

The gush of hot air sneaks its way inside of his scrubs, a cloud of steam surrounds his body, but it is not the wind from the vent that had the thin hairs on the back of his neck standing up. Instead, a turmoil of emotions and memories surface that he tries to suppress with all of his being, his jaw clenches so hard that it hurts, his fists curls up in tight balls as tense as every other muscle, and he can sense that horrifyingly familiar feeling eating the inside of his guts, and his soul, alive and he nearly chokes on the taste of metal and oil in his mouth.

Maybe at the next one of those endless painful therapy sessions that are helping but not healing him, he should just put his head in that stupid fish tank and drown himself, because he is tired of talking and then being asked to talk some more and really, what he is supposed to say anyway? No war tale can ever reproduce the smell of burning flesh and too much dried blood over one's desert tactical gear, bodies giving up on themselves and soldiers who haven't seen the trickles of a broken shower head in a week. The screams never really leave your head either.

He panics even more at the harsh scraping sound of a door being pushed open because he once nearly killed her – and he lives every day with the pain and the shame and it is also a life of utter _fear_ of things that are better unsaid - and he can't bear dragging the woman he loves into that shit again. But her footsteps come closer and soon her petite hand is on his wrist, her thumb is making small circles on his skin, soothing him until the worst passes and she can be physically closer as he fervently prays for the demons to go away, just one more time, just one more night.

**Who'll Stop the Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival (Derek)**

The boy is the spitting image of his mother, the same blonde hair and clear eyes that had looked straight into his and never once had faltered or had lost the faith she had unconditionally chosen to entrust on him. It is the smile, though, that literally _kills_ him, that open, wide, joyous grin that lights up the kid's whole face and speaks of trust in good and better things and life and that everything would be okay in the end because the future could not be anything else but bright.

He remembers the day she had crossed his path – and oh, how he would love to believe she had never been more than another patient but she had been _nothing_ of that -, and how her excitement over a ring that he late had battered viciously into the woods while the woman he loved watched had mirrored his own and how he had known, at that very moment, that under other circumstances they could have been good friends, because while he could love – and _did_ love - and could endure – and _did_ endure - dark and twisty and all the baggage that came with that, he was raised to hope and to be happy and he longs for those on a more permanent basis.

But when the child's father stares at him, there is only resentment and anger there, a fury that he is aware will never completely pass, because people can't make bad choices and take the ones you love from you and expect that the world will revert to its natural course. It is a burden that will always lay on his shoulders, regret that will never go away, for he was supposed to save her and should have known that it was not in his hands the power to change her fate, and he had failed, with her and with himself, and he cannot tell which one hurts him more, since they are intrinsically tied and when he turns away, absolution still isn't an option.

_Finis_


End file.
